1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cup assembly, and more particularly to the cup assembly having a cooling compartment to cool a portion of hot liquid contained in the cup body.
2. Description of Related Art
With reference to FIG. 13, U.S. Pat. No. 6,571,973 discloses a cup lid (40) which is composed of a lid seat (41) and a cover (42).
The lid seat (41) has an inclined bottom plate (414) relative to the cover (42), a first recess (411) defined in the bottom plate (414) to be mounted on a top periphery of a cup (50) and a second recess (416) defined in the bottom plate (414) to be mounted on the top periphery of the cup (50). It is noted that the first recess (411) has a height greater than that of the second recess (416) such that after the lid seat (41) is mounted on top of the cup (50), the bottom plate (414) is slanted. The cover (42) is able to be sealingly mounted on top of the lid seat (41) to define a liquid receiving space between the cover (42) and the bottom plate (414) of the lid seat (41).
Due to the first recess (411) defined in the bottom plate (414), the liquid receiving space is divided into a first chamber (412) and a second chamber (413). The bottom plate (414) further has an inlet (415) defined to communicate with an interior of the cup (50) and the first chamber (412). The cover (42) further has an outlet (421) defined through the cover (42) to communicate with the first chamber (412).
With reference to FIGS. 14, 15 and 16, when the conventional cup assembly is in use, the user is able to tilt the cup assembly to allow liquid contained in the cup (50) to flow into the first chamber (412) and the second chamber (413) from the inlet (415). Then the cup assembly is placed upright again to allow a portion of the liquid flowing into the first chamber (412) to flow back to the cup (50) and a portion of the liquid flowing into the second chamber (413) to be kept in the second chamber (413). Because a portion of the liquid flows into the second chamber (413), the area of the second chamber (413) facilitates a heat dissipation effect to the liquid in the second chamber (413). Thus the temperature of the liquid in the second chamber (413) reduces faster than that of the liquid still contained in the cup (50). Therefore, the user is able to use the outlet to sip the temperature-reduced liquid via the outlet (421) of the cover (42).
Although the conventional cup assembly does provide protection to the user to prevent mouth injury from the hot liquid in the cup (50), the user will have to adopt this two-phase process to drink the liquid even after the liquid temperature in the cup (50) has dropped to drinkable level, which is very inconvenient to the user.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention tends to provide an improved cup assembly to mitigate the aforementioned problems.